Monday, February 27, 2017

When Sammy Davis Jr. was Handed the Wrong Envelope at the Oscars - "Wait till the NAACP hears about this!"

By now, everyone knows about last night's epic gaffe at the Academy Awards. The most political Oscars ever - where hardly a moment went by without an anti-Trump joke, hymn to the "marginalized" or hushed reading from the Holy Koran - couldn't even get the most basic and important thing right - giving out the award for Best Picture.After opening the envelope, Warren Beatty visibly hesitated over reading the card. In fact Beatty had been given the wrong envelope - a second and unopened version of the Best Actress Award winner. He knew something was up, but his presenting partner Faye Dunaway, who had tussled with Beatty before the performance on who would get to read the winner, practically grabbed the card out of his hand and blurted out La La Land. It took two minutes before the actual winner, Moonlight, was identified, and by that time three representatives of La La Land had made their "acceptance" speeches.The flub was symbolic of how far the Oscars have sunk over the last few years. Very few people actually saw the Awards, and even fewer had seen more than one of the nominated films. This year's Best Picture was an independent film made over only a few days, about growing up black and gay. But even the notable social angle - Moonlight was the first "LBGTQ themed" film to win Best Picture - was overshadowed by the envelope gaffe and the incessant political virtue signaling of the previous hours.

Actually, last night wasn't the first envelope gaffe. But you have to go back pretty far to find another one. In 1964, Sammy Davis Jr. was handed the wrong envelope for the Best Musical Score Adaption. He read the card, and there was brief applause, but as the "winner" hadn't been one of the nominees for the award in question, it was quickly obvious that there had been a mistake. Davis saved the day with a quip - "Wait till the NAACP hears about this!""I ain't gonna make no mistake this time, baby," he said, putting on his reading glasses as a new envelope was handed to him.It was a more innocent time.

7 comments:

A slap-dash movie about one teenage male being sodomized by another teenage male. If I understand the plot, that's basically it. Black kid gets bullied, black kid gets gay sex. The Academy was criticized last year for not having enough black winners, they didn't want to make THAT mistake again. Double win! Black AND gay, two categories checked. These Hollywood people have become absolutely insufferable. What boors. They are pressing hard on the anti-Trump mania, so we need to do the same, boycott the heck out of them forever. They are pathological about Trump. What is really unforgiveable, they aren't amusing or creative. Here you see the supposed elites of entertainment, and there isn't a funny line or original thought between them. We have two Americas now. These Marxists belong to one of them. How odd we also have two Catholic churches! What are the odds.

Kathleen, I told my son basically the same thing recently: (he's very politically conservative but doesn't understand my extreme Catholicism) I told him the situation in the world and Hollywood is mirrored in the Church---maybe prefaced by the Church.